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Monday, 2 May 2011

The SNP's neverendum

Any chance of a debate of substance in the election campaign was always likely to be thwarted by the last weekend before the vote coinciding with the wall-to-wall coverage of the Royal wedding. Ah, but there was last night's leaders' debate of course. But that was relegated to a very late evening slot, so presumably the BBC isn't interested in maximising public engagement.

Never mind, there's still three clear days of campaigning left. However, the inconvenient death of Osama bin Laden has just been announced, so that'll dominate today's news schedules.

Oh well, it probably wouldn't have made much difference if none of the above had happened anyway, but probably the most interesting part of last night's debate was when Alex Salmond said that a referendum on independence would be delayed until the second half of a five-year term, which is consistent with my recent ramblings on the SNP trying to avoid a plebiscite because it couldn't be won. Even more interesting is the excuse, which is that it's important to get the Scotland Bill through in the meantime to provide the powers to 'grow' Scotland's economy, whatever that means precisely.

Which is interesting because my impression was that the Scotland Bill's powers were considered by the Nationalists to be inadequate for the task in hand, so why delay the march to independence? If additional powers are so important then surely it's even more important to move to the full powers of independence ASAP?

Of course, the rationale for the delay is more than likely that a referendum couldn't be won and Mr Salmond hopes that conditions will be more favourable towards the end of the SNP's second term, or that another excuse can be dreamt up by then.

Which kind of brings to mind the concept of a 'neverendum', which is a referendum repeated ad infinitum, or at least until the desired result is obtained.

The SNP's repeated delays on the independence referendum is beginning to look like a variation on this, with the 'never-ending' element of the neverendum portmanteau referring to the wait for the referendum to actually take place!